Quote

What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.

Philip Roth

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Philip Roth
Age: 85 †
Born: 1933
Born: March 18
Died: 2018
Died: May 22
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Philip Milton Roth
Write
Oaks
Ends
Moreover
Reason
Rarely
Ever
Fit
Writing
Fiction
Mackerel
Mind
Inside
Acorn
Grows
Relinquish
Start
Acorns

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You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.
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The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen and it can't compete with the computer screen I don't think. And now we have all those screens so against all those screens I think the book can't measure up.
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I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface
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Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't to phrase them was to invent them and own them.
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Suicide is the role you write for yourself. You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged -- where they will find you and how they will find you. But one performance only.
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Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.
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Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.
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There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.
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The legend engraved on the face of the Jewish nickel- on the body of every Jewish child!- not IN GOD WE TRUST, but SOMEDAY YOU'LL BE A PARENT AND YOU'LL KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE.
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Let's hope the first comes first.
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The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.
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It's best to give while your hand is still warm.
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Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
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Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.
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Sex is all the enchantment required. Do men find women so enchanting once the sex is taken out? Does anyone find anyone that enchanting unless they have sexual business with them? Who else are you enchanted by? Nobody.
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Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.
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Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.
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I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.
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As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.
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The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.
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